BA-HA debuts healthy, organic plates at 1000 Trades

Founded in 2017 by Frankie Heekin and Becky Powell, BA-HA will be debuting their exciting menu in April at 1000 Trades. Expect delicious plates that are healthy, organic and using ingredients locally and ethically sourced.

Q: Hi both! Welcome to Frederick Street. You’re both first-timers in the kitchen, so give us the background on BA-HA.

We’ve been creating various dishes popular to non-vegans throughout the past year and gained so much knowledge on our journey. It made sense to launch BA-HA officially in January 2018.

We’re passionate about food and feel as though veganism has a bad stigma for only delivering ‘rabbit food’ – this is definitely not the case in our kitchen! We’ve been working on recipes for months to ensure we deliver wholesome delicious dishes packed full of protein.

Q: Sounds like you’ve been doing your homework. And how did each of you go from cheffing it alone to being part of a culinary duo?

A: Our story… where do we start? We began our journey almost 5 years ago when we first met in the Jewellery Quarter and worked in hospitality in various cocktail bars, kitchens, events, and festivals. We also worked with projects within Birmingham community centres delivering hot nutritious meals derived from freeganism, which is recovering wasted goods from large supermarkets.

We’re inspired by the incredible people we have met on our travels as well as our colleagues, who continue to grow our palates, minds and menus. An example of a woman of inspiration is a monk by the name of Jeong Kwan. A chef who cooks as to what she refers to as “Temple Food” – plant based dishes made from ingredients collected from a wonderful garden maintained by herself outside of the monastery. Having had our very own allotment we put our time into understanding our produce and as a result we have fallen in love with food.

Q: And is this your first ever kitchen residency or will Brum foodies have spotted you around town?

A: We hosted our very first pop-up earlier this monthin Kings Heath’s Kitchen Garden Cafe. It was a huge success and a sold out event. Our theme was “The Munchie House”, an American street food style event. We had Philly style burgers, cheesecakes, smores and more. Our next festival is The Cheese Festival at Birmingham Seasonal Market. A very exciting event to launch our vegan cheeses. I brie-lieve it is going to be a grate day for us.

Q: A PUN! We think you’ll fit in here just fine. What would you say to the vegan virgins, those cautious first-timers about to dip their toe in the pool of clean-conscious eating?

A: Try everything! It can be so much fun developing new flavours and actually very therapeutic. You have the option to try all your dishes plant based. How exciting… no restrictions with the endless option of the freshest ingredients that are grown, not born.

Q: With that in mind, tell us about two of your favourite dishes from the menu?

A: We love our entire menu, but if we had to choose it would be our Chocolate Cookie Crumb Jeesecake and our Cluckin Lush Burger, they are two of our favourites. Our Clukin Patty has been blind tested by Birmingham’s foodies and has passed the test with flying colours. Our Jeesecake has a smooth chocolate cookie cream layered on top of our home made biscuit crumb all smothered with our chocolate sauce…. What more can you ask for!